Gorman flicked the reins and the horse lurched the wagon forward. Dayn faced out the back, his feet dragging, but he lifted them in a hurry when he noticed the damp dirt of the road begin to replace the polished shine of the leather. He folded his legs in front of him and propped an elbow on his thigh, leaning his chin onto his fist. His body rocked back and forth to the rhythm of the wagon as it made its way through the bumps and ruts of the road.
As they lumbered along, Dayn watched the house grow distant. Dwindling tendrils of smoke rose from the chimney. Porch rockers swayed to the rhythm of the chimes in the morning breeze. A strange feeling washed over him. He could not seem to take his eyes off the place. It was as if he would never see it again.
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Chapter 4: Dark Talk
The much anticipated wedding of the young prince and his bride was but three days away, and the great city-state of Tearia was in a festive mood. For months the possibility of the union had been in doubt; the royal household had been in turmoil ever since the fire the year before. But now, after much speculation, the couple was to marry, and the continuation of the royal line was all but assured. There was great joy for it in Tearia, but there was also dark talk. Some felt the wedding would not, or should not, take place; surely the gods would intervene and put a stop to it. Others cheered the event, believing the gods had already intervened on the prince’s behalf. But one thing they all agreed on was that a royal union needed to take place soon. The King had not been well these past months, his body grown weaker and his mind more confused by the day.
The illness had come upon Sedric quickly. Too quickly some said. There were whispers that something, or someone, sinister was behind it. The healers held little hope for him, and everyone knew it was just a matter of time. There was nothing now, short of an act of the gods, to stop his son’s ascension to the throne. The entire week had been proclaimed a holiday, and whether one agreed with the union or not, it had not kept anyone from taking advantage of the celebration.
The royal family had feasted and toasted around their own great table for days now. They were eager for the marriage that would bring some happiness to an otherwise dismal year. But just as not everyone in the streets believed the union was a good one, not everyone at the royal table did either.
Brina had sat through it all, day after day, night after night, but was weary of the soreness of her tongue where she had bitten it in silence. Tonight, surrounded once again by the royal revelers, she found she could bear it no more.
“This is a travesty,” she said, pushing up from the table. She glared at the pasty-faced guests across from her, their mouths agape at her unexpected words.
“Sit down this instant,” her husband ordered. “This is neither the time nor the place for you to air your opinions.” Mahon grabbed her by the elbow and yanked her back down to her seat.
Brina wrested her arm from his grasp. “Get your hands off of me, Mahon. I told you never to touch me again, or have you forgotten?”
Mahon’s face paled, then deepened to shades of red. He pulled her toward him. “You will cease this now, Brina. Do you understand? This is a day of celebration.”
“I have sat by for days now and endured this so-called celebration,” she said. “But what, dear husband, are we supposed to be celebrating?”
“The wedding of our prince of course,” he replied. “It is a joyous occasion for everyone in Tearia.” He eyed the squirming guests across from him, and raised his goblet in an awkward solute.
“Everyone? No, I think not,” Brina said. “Reiv, for one—” But before she could say another word, Mahon squeezed her arm, digging his nails into her flesh.
“You will not mention that name at this table,” he hissed.
Brina scoffed, then scanned the faces around her. Those seated at the table were family and friends she knew well. Once she could have said anything to them without fear of repercussion. But things had changed this past year, and the subject of Reiv was one carefully avoided. Brina felt the grip on her arm tighten as Mahon leaned in closer. The heat of his breath on her face and the antagonism of his tone surprised her. He was not a hostile man, but even he had changed this past year.
She raised her head defiantly and worked to release her arm. “No,” she said. “Let us not mention the one person’s name that should be mentioned.”
Brina jerked her arm from Mahon’s grasp, then rose and rested a cool, critical stare on every person seated there. Some ignored her, as her sister the Queen did, and a few scowled at her insolence. But most simply looked away in embarrassment. Brina turned her gaze to the elaborate feast spread before her. Dozens of golden goblets, once carefully arranged, were scattered throughout a maze of food, their purple spills bleeding into the white tablecloth. Plates of half-eaten food sat ignored while others were piled with second and third helpings. Some guests did not even bother with plates, choosing to pick from the serving platters instead. It occurred to Brina, as she stared at the abundance of discarded food, that most of it would be thrown away. So many hungry people outside the city walls, yet this would be tossed into the gutters rather than sent to feed them.
With that thought in mind, she realized that angering the guests would only serve to prevent her from doing what had to be done—what she had been doing for years now—and, even more importantly, what had to be done tonight. She did not excuse herself, but turned and walked silently from the banquet hall.
Brina was almost to her room when a noise from behind alerted her. She glanced over her shoulder and frowned, then quickened her pace. It was Mahon, come no doubt to settle with her. He was at the far end of the long corridor that led to her private chamber, but even from that distance she could tell he was primed for battle. She clenched her jaw and kept on walking.
“How could you have behaved like that,” Mahon said upon reaching her. “How could you have mentioned Reiv’s name at a celebration of your nephew’s wedding?”
“The fact that it is a celebration of my nephew’s wedding is the very reason I felt it needed to be mentioned,” she said. She continued toward her room, her eyes averted from her husband’s exasperated face. He would not follow her all the way. He would not dare.
Mahon followed at her heels, his long strides keeping up with her short, quick ones. “Brina, you must listen to reason,” he said. He increased his pace to round her and planted himself between her and her chamber door. Brina reached for the door handle, but he positioned his body in front of it.
“Out of my way,” Brina said indignantly. “I am tired and wish to go to bed.” She attempted another reach for the handle, but he moved to once again block her.
Mahon cocked a brow and narrowed his eyes. “Tired? Or is this merely an excuse to sneak out and see Reiv?”
Brina shot him a glare, then fumbled for the handle and shoved the door open. She brushed past him and entered the room. He followed her inside.
She spun to face him, her hands balled into fists. “Get out!” she shouted. “You have no right to be here.”
Mahon closed the door behind him and secured the lock with a click. “I have every right to be here.”
“No, you do not, not since--”
Mahon’s jaw went slack. “Brina, please.”
“Please what? Please do not remind you of what you did to our child? Or please let your murderous hands touch me?”
“You know what happened to our child had to be done,” he said.
“Do I detect a tear, husband? And who would it be for? Our infant son, or his executioner?”
“You know I did not kill our son!”
“Perhaps you did not kill him with your own hands, but your insistence that it be done took him from us just the same.”
Mahon grabbed her by the shoulders. “You are right. It was not done by my hands. It was done by yours! You would allow no one else to touch him. It was you, not me that—"
“Do not turn this on me,” Brina said, pulling away.
“I am turning this on you. You know I would have had someone else do it. Why did you insist on carrying the burden yourself?”
“I would not have the last eyes my child ever saw be those of a stranger!” Brina turned aside. “Please, let us not speak of this anymore. It is too painful, and it will not bring Keefe back to us.”
Mahon nodded and reached to embrace her. She rebuked him and stepped away. “It is time you left,” she said.
“You still have not answered my earlier question. Are you planning to see Reiv tonight?”
“Yes,” she replied.
Mahon exploded in fury, raking perfume bottles, hair clips, and combs from the dressing table, sending them crashing to the floor. “I will not allow it!” he screamed.
Brina winced and backed away, wondering if she, too, would be raked to the floor. She lifted her chin with shaky determination. “I will not be kept from him, Mahon. He needs me.”
“He needs you? What about me? I am your husband. I need you.”
“The sort of need you have is neither so great nor so important as the one Reiv has.”
Brina walked slowly toward him, noting how his body was poised as if in a fight for his life. She placed a hand on his arm. “Mahon, please try to understand,” she said with forced control. “You did not sit by the boy’s bed night and day listening to his screams as the bandages were pulled from his hands. You were not there when we thought the fever would surely take him. You were not there to listen to his pleas for Cinnia and his mother, neither of whom even bothered to come and see him. You were not there to see his face when he learned Cinnia was betrothed to Whyn, his own brother. And you were not there to hear his sobs when he found out he had been disinherited by his family in a mock court that took not only his inheritance, but his future. How do you think he feels to have lost everything, including his very name? To have been called Ruairi, the Red King, for fifteen years, then to be forced to take the name ‘Reiv’, the name of a servant. Gods, Mahon, where is your compassion? Have you no room in your heart for the boy?”
“What happened he brought upon himself.”
“Brought upon himself? Gods, he was saving Cinnia’s life.”
“From a fire he started!”
“It was an accident, Mahon.”
“Perhaps, but he had a history of so-called accidents. No, he got what he deserved.”
Mahon paused, surveying Brina’s stricken face. “I am sorry that Ruairi—that Reiv has suffered,” he offered. “But what is done is done. Be thankful Labhras provided him with a respectable job. Foreman over the fields would be considered an honor for any Jecta.”
Brina cringed at the word.
“Brina, Reiv is Jecta now,” Mahon said. “You have to face it. Things could have gone much worse. You know this. At least he was not banished to Pobu. Considering the boy burned down Labhras’s house and endangered everyone in it, I would say the man has been more than generous. Reiv has been provided an apartment within the city walls and he will certainly never go hungry. What more does he need?”
“He needs his life back,” Brina said.
But in her heart she knew he would never get it, and after the wedding of his brother, Whyn, to Cinnia in three days time, she wasn’t sure Reiv would want any life at all.
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Chapter 5: Peace Offering
Another terracotta pot streaked across the atrium, trailed by a spinning ball of dirt and a once well-rooted marigold. The missile found its mark and crashed against a pillar that divided the centrally located courtyard from the rest of the apartment. Shards of pottery, clumps of soil, and what remained of the plant exploded against the stone, the noise of it drowned out by the scream of the boy who had hurled it.
Reiv stood poised as if for battle, his trembling hands clenched within leather gloves, his face as red as the hair bound at his back. In that instant he wanted to kill somebody, anybody would do, though a few familiar faces came immediately to mind. If only he could run those faces through with his sword and make them suffer as much as he had, perhaps he could breath a little easier, or at least get some sleep. But he knew he never would, no matter how great the insidious fantasy seemed at the moment. Tearian law forbade him to even own a sword now. Reiv grabbed another plant and raised it above his head, then sent it flying into a table of zinnias. For now, killing plants would just have to do.
He reached for another, but realized the foolishness of his actions. It wouldn’t change anything. He knew that. And he would be the one to have to clean up the mess. There were no longer servants to do his bidding.
“Ruairi, the prince who wanted to slay lions,” he muttered. “Now Reiv, the slayer of marigolds.” He shook his head and looked around the messy atrium. Of all places to take out his frustrations, this had probably not been the best choice.
The atrium had actually become his sanctuary during the past several months, after his hands had begun to heal and he was forced to relocate there. The plants at least gave him something to do when he wasn’t working the fields. Before, when he was Prince and didn’t have to tend to such menial tasks, he had thought of cultivating plants as woman’s work. But Brina had helped him start a garden in the atrium on the pretense that they could work together to develop healing lotions for his hands.
Between the two of them they had grown an assortment of herbs and flowering plants, and had tried their skills at a number of homemade medicinals which Reiv rubbed into his burns every day. Unfortunately, the medicinals had not had the effect on his hands he had hoped for. The scars were bad enough to look at—he almost ¬always wore gloves to hide them—but it was the lack of sensitivity and decreased mobility in his fingers that annoyed him the most. Most areas of his hands were all but numb, the burns so deep that damage to nerves could not be undone. With exercise he had managed to maintain some dexterity, but his grasp on things would never be the same. Picking leaves off of plants didn’t require much strength, but his fine motor skills required concentration and patience. And it was patience he was most lacking.
He stormed over to the mess that littered the once spotless floor and groaned. If only he had stopped with one plant, but he hadn’t, and now there were not one but several piles of dirt, broken clay, and wilting leaves to clean up. He gathered up a few shards of terracotta and cradled them in his hand, then flung them back down to the floor, smashing them into smaller pieces still.
“Oh, I do not care!” he shouted. “Just stay there!”
He marched toward the living area, threw back the dividing drape, and plopped down onto the chaise in a huff. The room was usually dark, as was the rest of the apartment. There were no windows facing the streets on any side of the place, which suited him just fine. He didn’t care to look out into the streets anyway. The only light that ever entered any of the rooms was from the central courtyard. That is, if he bothered to pull back the heavy drapes that separated it from the rest of the house. Many days he didn’t bother to pull them back at all, preferring to exist in the darkness. He didn’t know why he felt that way. Perhaps the darkness desensitized him. But he had left the drape open when he stormed into the room just now, and the annoying light of morning was filtering in.
He was housed in the outer quadrant of Tearia, near the Jecta dormitories, the stables, and the buildings that housed some of the Tearian Guard. The general Jecta population was not allowed within the walls of Tearia; only employed laborers and certain skilled craftsmen could even step foot there. Few Jecta lived there permanently, except for Reiv, who by definition had become one. But he did not consider himself Jecta and swore he never would.
He glared over his crossed arms and down at his barely clad body. To look at him one would have certainly taken him for a Jecta. His hair was not blond, his skin was no longer smooth, and he seldom wore a tunic anymore. Now he was usually clad in a cloth tied about his hips. It was the most sensible thing to work in; he had learned that early on. Over time, his skin had adjusted to the heat
and the sun, though it never turned the golden brown of a Jecta. It preferred to stay a rosy pink.
Reiv hated his job in the fields, but it was the days when he was away from them that he hated the most. On those days, he found himself stuck in the apartment, bored and restless. Today was one of those days, as had been the past five, and it was taking its toll. The entire week had been proclaimed a holiday, so most of the Jecta laborers and craftsmen had been sent home to Pobu. Even Brina was not able to come and see him as much as she usually did. She was obligated to attend a multitude of festivities with the family and had explained to him she would not be able to slip away easily. The family, Reiv knew, did not approve of her visits.
What now? He scanned the meager contents of the white-washed room: the old chaise he was sitting on; a cross-legged stool pushed against the wall near the door; a small marble table, scrubbed rough from use and misuse; an old oak table in the kitchen, its two low benches pushed beneath. His mouth compressed with displeasure. Not very princely quarters, but then again, he was no longer a prince. No longer was he Ruairi, the Red King. Now he was Reiv: Reiv the Foreman, Reiv the Jecta, Reiv the Nobody. He crossed his arms, tucking his gloved hands beneath them, and fought the hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach.
What now?
He asked that same question almost every day, but the answer rarely changed. “Well, fool, now you have something to do. You can clean up the mess you made,” he said. He trudged back to the atrium, then stopped to scowl at the first pile of debris that lay at his bare feet.
A sudden pounding on the door made him jump, and he spun to face it. He wasn’t expecting anyone; no one other than Brina ever came to see him. She’d said she would come, but not until much later, and this rap was loud, not soft like Brina’s. He thought not to answer it, to deny he had even heard it. But a second, bolder knock alerted him to the possibility that maybe, just maybe, someone had come bearing good news for once: news that Cinnia could not live without him, news that his family wanted him back, news that he was Ruairi again, Prince of Tearia.
Souls of Aredyrah 1 - The Fire and the Light Page 6